


pour some sugar on me

by bottomlinsons (grimgrace)



Category: One Direction
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, and dick boys who don't know how to flirt, warnings for dick coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4340507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimgrace/pseuds/bottomlinsons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s a bit clueless, and Louis’ a barista with clever hands. (here meaning: Harry's very clueless, and Louis draws dicks in coffee foam.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	pour some sugar on me

**Author's Note:**

> So this actually happened to me today. That is my photo. Of my coffee. We were at this cafe down the street from my house and our coffees arrived and my friend went “dude” and I went “holy shit there’s a dick in my coffee.” 
> 
> ANYWAY, then I went and wrote a Larry ficlet about it so ENJOY.
> 
> ps. this is very short

Harry’s favourite cafe is called  _Grande’s_ . 

He’d only found it a few months ago, when the power in his building had gone out three hours before one of his final essays was due and he’d been forced to find an alternate source of electricity. He can’t quite remember the first person he spoke to, or even what he ordered, but there was something about the quaint little cafe that stuck with him. It could have been a thousand things: the bright red tables, the eclectic mix of cushioned chairs that didn’t match or the flowers that bloomed next to the til - a fresh bunch every morning.

It had been love at first sight, to be perfectly honest. 

But he’s a uni student, is the thing. No matter what the movies say, Harry doesn’t always have the extra cash on him to sit in a cafe and buy coffee after coffee. He has bills to pay, and textbooks to buy. And as a result, his time at  _Grande’s_  had to be curtailed. In the name of self control. 

“What can I get for you today?” the man in front of Harry asks. 

Harry doesn’t have to look at the menu. He already knows. “The French toast, please,” he says, trying not to look as guilty as he feels. The toast is twelve pounds, by itself, and he really  _should_  be saving to fix his broken phone screen, but... “And a mocha?” 

Harry’s never been particularly good at self control. 

The boy scribbles Harry’s order down with a smile and takes the menus. Harry hasn’t visited enough to know all the server’s names by heart, but he can recognize their faces at least. This one, with his blue eyes and sharp cheekbones, is particularly unforgettable. 

That’s when Niall slams his books down on the table, scaring the life out of Harry and making quite a few of the cafe’s other patrons jump. Harry’s only scared for a moment, though, after which he’s immensely pleased. 

 _See?_  he wants to crow to his conscience.  _I’m being social so a coffee trip is absolutely acceptable. After all, I can hardly host Niall at_ my  _house._  

“Why’d we have to go out again?” Niall whines as he drops into the seat opposite Harry’s. “We could have hung at your place and I wouldn’t have had to shower.” 

Harry’s not sure whether or not consciences can be smug - but if they can,  _his is._  

He scrunches up his nose in Niall’s direction. 

“We’re  _adults_ , Niall,” he says snootily. “We’re adults who get coffee and who shower everyday no matter where they’re going.” 

Niall rolls his eyes and snorts. Something that sounds suspiciously like “ _not bloody likely_ ,” escapes him before he buries his nose in the menu. 

He gets distracted quickly. “They’ve got all day breakfast here?” he says, not seconds later. “Sick!” 

Harry lets his attention return to his laptop, for a moment. He’s only got to add a few more songs to his new playlist before it’s finished, and he wants to share it as soon as possible. He’s only got a couple of thousand followers on Spotify, nothing like the sheer legions of people who devote their time to Nick’s account - but Harry’s the station intern and Nick’s the  _station host_ so that’s honestly only to be expected. 

The people who  _do_ follow Harry seem to like what he posts anyway. Even if he is fairly new to the music/radio game. This one, ‘Cold Winter Mornings’, is full of all the songs he’s been listening to since the snow started. And, since he’s been spending an overwhelming amount of his free mornings listening to those songs in this very cafe, it’s only fair that he share them from there as well. 

“The mocha?” the same voice from earlier interrupts. 

Harry doesn’t register it right away, doesn’t look up until the Niall’s sighed and pointed a finger across the table. “His,” Niall says, “thanks mate.” 

Now that Harry does look up, he sees that it’s the same boy who took his order. He really is quite lovely. 

Awkwardly, Harry nods. “Yeah, thanks.” 

The boy’s already turned away, but Harry thinks he spots the beginnings of a smile. He flushes anyway, ducking his head and he looks back to his computer. 

“Smooth,” Niall says. 

“You forgot to order,” Harry reminds him. 

“ _Shit_ ,” Niall says. 

Harry adds the final few songs.  _Winter Birds_  is at the top of the list, one of Harry’s long time favourites, as well as one of the new songs from  _Alt-J._ That makes forty-nine songs, Harry notes. The playlist, played through, will take just under three and a half hours. Perfect, he thinks, just  _one more song_. 

“Uh, Harry?” 

“Hmm?” 

Harry doesn’t look away from the computer screen, just pulls open his personal music file and looks at the songs he hasn’t uploaded yet. A girl in one of his classes had shown him a song by a group called the ‘Vancouver Sleep Clinic’ that would definitely work with the rest of his selection. 

Niall is not one to be swayed, however. 

And he’s certainly not one to be ignored. 

“Oi,” he says his voice a little louder now. “ _Harry_.” 

“Hang on,” Harry says - and god, his mum would be so ashamed of him, if he was being rude like this in front of her. She’d have confiscated his laptop and grounded him a mile back. “Sorry, just give me five seconds and I’ll close it.” 

“Harry,” Niall says for a third time. “ _Look.”_

Harry looks. 

All thoughts of his lovely playlist flee his mind. 

He blinks a couple of times, staring down at his coffee cup and forcing his brain to make sense. He hasn’t added his two spoons of sugar yet, so the foamy art floating on top of his drink is still beautifully intact. 

“That’s...” Harry says. Or he tries to say. His throat has suddenly become incredibly dry. “That’s a...” 

(He thinks vaguely of his Instagram account, and the thousands of hot beverages he’s photographed before. This one’s going to be a little more memorable, he thinks.)

Niall, who’s always been a good friend to him, seems happy to help him find the right words. 

“That’s a dick, mate.” 

Both boys stare at the drink for several moments. Having determined the nature of the image before them, it seems they’re suddenly lost for words. 

They do their best, anyway. 

“Are you going to drink it?” Niall asks. 

Harry looks up at him urgently. “Should I?” 

“I don’t know!” Niall says. “I’m asking  _you_.” 

Harry looks back down at the coffee. The foam is starting to bubble slightly, the brown liquid curling around the white. The artistry is actually quite beautiful, if he thinks about it. The balls are clearly separate from the shaft, and the artist has even managed to perfect the little slit at the end. 

 _Good grief_ , Harry thinks. 

“What do you think it means?” he asks Niall. 

Niall looks at him, his face a glorious cocktail of incredulous and indignant. “It’s a dick, not fucking sign language!” he hisses. 

He leans a little closer, bending his body across the small table so that their table neighbours - a beautiful old couple who look completely smitten with each other,  _oh god_  - don’t get caught up in their mess. 

Harry nods hastily. 

“No, right, yeah,” he says quickly. “I mean, yeah, you’re right, I get that ... but ...  _what do you think it means_?” 

Niall shoots him a very dry look. 

Harry probably deserves it. 

Harry doesn’t care. 

He turns to look at the counter, too caught up in his own head to worry about his own dignity. There’s a huge, silver coffee machine just to the left of the til that’s hissing and spitting loudly - but it’s too tall for Harry to be able to see who’s hidden behind it. He cranes his neck, tilts his body out of his chair as he tries to get a better look. 

“Oh, for fucks sake,” he hears Niall say behind him. 

Harry swings back around to face him, decision made. “I’m going to go ask.” 

"Right,” Niall says flatly, “course you are.” 

That’s as good as approval in Harry’s eyes. He pushes his seat back and stands abruptly, keeping a keen eye on the counter as he carefully lifts up the coffee. 

“Be right back,” he says. 

Niall doesn’t say anything. It’s all in his eyes. 

When Harry gets to the counter, he sets the coffee down and waits. The dick, now that he looks at it again, is still in good shape. The coffee is almost certainly getting cold though. 

Harry’s thoughts are lingering sadly on the three quid he’s going to have to shell out for a coffee he didn’t even drink when someone appears on the other side of the counter. 

It’s his boy, Harry realises. 

Then, wait, no, shit. Not  _his_  boy, Harry hastily berates his own subconscious. His server. The boy. The boy who’d been his server. 

“Can I help you?” the boy asks. 

His lips are a very pretty shade of pink. 

Harry clears his throat, eyes darting up and down a few times as he forces himself to look the boy in the eye. There’s a tilt to the corner of the boy’s mouth that suggest his look hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

And now he’s about to ask about the dick in his coffee, Harry thinks.  _Great._  

“Uh,” Harry begins. 

The boy waits a beat. Then his brow quirks up. “Yes?” 

Harry probably should have thought this through. 

“Uhm,” he tries again, and fuck his lips are dry for some reason and there’s a good chance Niall’s got his iPhone out so he can phone this whole debacle. “I just had, uh, a question?” 

The boy smiles. There’s something incredibly cheeky to it, hidden at the corner of his lips. “Well, why don’t we see if I have an answer?” he says. 

He really is very handsome. Fuck.

Harry can’t even complain, not really. He’s done this to himself. He should have just drunk the dick coffee - what had he even been  _thinking_  getting up to ask. What kind of exchange had he been expecting?  

“It’s, uh, about my drink?” Harry says. 

“Go on,” the boy says. 

Rather belatedly, Harry is very glad that he’d come in at a slow hour - this conversation would be incredibly difficult to have at the front of a queue. Maybe this is like that thing with band-aids, Harry thinks. Maybe he’s just going to rip it off in one fell swoop. 

“Right,” Harry says, as he gathers his nerve. Here goes fucking nothing. “Well, I was wondering what it was.” 

And he points to the dick coffee. 

The boy looks down. 

There’s a beat. And another. 

And then: 

“Looks like a penis to me, mate,” the boy says. 

Harry balks. “What?” he says. 

The boy shrugs. “A penis,” he says. “Dick. Cock and balls, if you will.” 

Harry hopes with every fibre of his being that the sweet old couple from before has decided to turn their hearing aids off. 

“It’s not too bad, actually,” the boy continues, looking up at Harry sharply. “Why? Don’t you like it?”

Harry feels all the blood in his body rush to his face and thinks, with surprising clarity, that Niall was right. 

(This is not a good sign.) 

“Uh, no?” Harry says slowly, carefully. “I like it.” 

The boy grins, and Harry feels like he’s just fallen into a trap. The boy’s eyes glint devilishly as he leans a little closer across the counter. 

“You like dick coffee?” the boy asks, leaning close. “Or just dick?” 

Harry’s brain goes offline for a few seconds, but he can’t really be blamed. When his thoughts clear, he hears what sound suspiciously like Niall’s laughter in the background. 

“Uh,” Harry says - and  _fuck_ , he really needs to stop leading with that. “Both?” 

Niall’s laughter gets louder. 

The boy though, he doesn’t laugh or smirk or any of the nasty things Harry’s brain had crafted up. Instead, his smile just kind of softens. 

“Is that right?” he says. “And here’s me thinking you just didn’t notice.” 

Harry blinks. Once. Twice. 

“Wait,” he says, as he brain slowly slips the pieces together. “You’re the one that .... ?” 

The boy’s smile grows, but his cheeks tinge a little pink around the edges. It’s  _adorable._

“Well, to start with I was just trying to hit on you,” the boy explains - and Harry’s brain fizzes out for another second. “But you never noticed. So it’s become more of a waiting game.” 

Harry stares at him. “You’ve done this before?” he asks. 

“Every day since you got here, Curly,” the boy says. 

Harry flushes. On the one hand, this is brilliant news. There’s a cute boy in a coffee shop who’s been trying to  _hit on_ Harry. This is everything and more than Harry ever wanted from his university experience. 

On the other hand, he’s just found out he’s been drinking dick coffee for the better part of the semester. And Niall’s laughter is  _definitely_ getting too loud now. He’s going to get kicked out. 

But Harry’s brain doesn’t give two shits about any of those things, apparently. At least not if the now constant loop of,  _curly, curly, curly, curly,_ is anything to go by.

“Still with me?” the boy asks. When Harry focuses, he sees the smile is fading slightly - replaced by a small, tentative look of concern. 

Harry doesn’t like that look. He wants the smile back. 

“Do you want to get a drink with me?” he asks abruptly. “Also, what’s your name?” 

The boy looks startled for a moment, before the smile comes back. (A small part of Harry throws his fist up in the air.) “It’s Louis,” he says. “What kind of drink?” 

Harry grins.  _Louis._

“Hello, Louis,” he says. “I’m Harry.” 

Now Louis’ definitely smiling again. He looks amused, his eyes lighting up as they scan Harry’s face. 

“Hello, Harold,” he says. “What  _kind_ of drink?” 

“Coffee?” Harry says. 

In his defence, it’s been a tough couple of minutes. And he’d been a little distracted; as  _Harold_  joined the loop of  _curly’_ s in his brain _._  

Louis didn’t appear to be the type of boy to take mercy, though. 

“Coffee?” he repeats, looking devious. “You don’t think maybe our relationship has had enough of that?” 

 _Our relationship,_  Harry thinks. 

Louis’s smile gets a little bit bigger. “Tell you what,” he says, leaning close like he was sharing a lovely, little secret. “How about I make you another coffee, to make up for your cold one, and then I take my break and join you?” He smiles, and it’s absolutely lovely. “On the house. One hundred percent dick-free.” 

Harry smiles sheepishly, and feels vaguely like he’s walking on air. 

“That sounds good,” he says. 

Louis grins and leans back. “Alright then,” he says. “One coffee, coming right up.” 

Feeling slightly shell-shocked, Harry turns and walks back to his table. 

“I got the whole thing,” Niall says gleefully, waving his iPhone in front of Harry’s face. “I’m going home to put it on YouTube, I’m gonna get Nick to share it.” 

“I have a date,” Harry tells him. 

Niall grins. “Fuck yeah you do, you little charmer.” 

. 

Niall leaves after a few minutes, rushing off with a final good luck wish. He’s not actually going to put the footage up, Harry thinks. Probably. 

Louis arrives seconds later, anyway, and the thought vanishes from Harry’s mind. He’s carrying two mugs. 

“Your drink, Harold,” he says, as he sits down in Niall’s abandoned seat. 

Harry looks at the coffee. There, in the brown and white cream, is an exquisitely detailed penis that curves slightly towards the handle. 

When he looks back up at Louis, his grin is something wicked. 

. 

_fin_

 

**Author's Note:**

> whY IS EVERYTHING I WRITE FOR THESE TWO SO BIZARRE?? ? ? 
> 
> big love to the barista who made me the dick coffee this afternoon without u none of this would have happened ur a star 
> 
> you know the drill if you liked it pls reblog the tumblr [post](http://bottomlinsons.tumblr.com/post/124069197267) and if you [follow](http://www.bottomlinsons.tumblr.com) me i will 10000000% follow you back 
> 
> don't forget to leave a comment!! xx


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